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Now How Much Would You Pay? (For Yahoo!)
LHOOQtius_ov_Borg writes: "A CNet article discusses Yahoo! considering more subscription-fee based premium services. The article points out that other sites, such as TheStreet.Com, have not had success with this. It also mentions that Yahoo has stated that less than 10% of their current revenue comes from 'pure play' Internet companies and 'financially questionable' advertisers.'" Added to which, ABetterRoss writes, "Submitting to some Yahoo categories is no longer free. from the FAQ: "In our ongoing effort to 1) build a useful, comprehensive Web directory and 2) address the needs of people submitting sites to the directory, we have expanded our fee-based Business Express program to cover all submissions to our main commercial categories: 'Business and Economy/Business to Business' and 'Business and Economy/Shopping and Services.'"
$1.42
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Yahoo and google are different enough that I find them both useful. Yahoo groups sites by category; if I want to look at a bunch of sites on some common subject, like say 3-d art, yahoo is my first start. If I want to do a search for something more obscure, like the exact text of an error message, I use google. I don't use google all the time because quite frankly raw search results can be extremely annoying, and just because a site has a lot of links pointing to it doesn't always make it useful.
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Seriously.
It's like anything in the world that has the gall to charge money for a service is evil in Slashdot-land. How dare you try to make money on the internet. For shame..
BilldaCat
Yup, why go to a plumbing store when you can go to a pipe store, a T-fitting store, a faucet store, etc.? Face it, aggregation, whether products or information, can be extremely useful. Aggregation is done by "middlemen," and there are useful middlemen, and useless middlemen. As a matter of fact, in the "real world" the more efficent middlemen (e.g. WalMart) are getting increasingly powerful--they are hardly being "gotten rid of"--by their efficiencies in aggregating products and services in a convenient and useful way.
Another example: TV networks (cable or broadcast) aggregate programs from a variety of producers; a minority of programs are actually produced in-house. They run ads and use the proceeds to buy those programs. Some channels (e.g. HBO) charge instead; you can choose not to pay, and still get what the other channels provide. Viacom, for instance, owns both subscriber- and ad-supported channels. I don't see them all of a sudden deciding to make MTV a pay channel, do you?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but TNSTAAFL. (There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.) Aggregation has value, but it also has costs. The latter are going to get passed to you one way (advertising) or another (direct charges). If you don't find that service worth the price, go without or create your own.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make was, yeah, middlement are important, but how much cost is there for an Internet middleman? Not much. Fundamentally, I think free sites can end up being just as good, because most users are willing to spend a second or two contributing back to the value of the site. Take Slashdot. Slashdot acts as a middleman for news, but most of the value is added by posters and moderators, not by those who post the articles.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I'm sure this fellow has better things to do with his time than administer a email/fax webserver. It's not about the possibility, it's about the convenience, and the reliability.
Yahoo better tread carefully. There are lots of portals with alternative revune models in the wings ready to fill in should Yahoo slip: The ISP portals like MSN or AOL, the contest ones like iWon, and so on.
I've got prime real estate that I'm surprised others aren't wanting to buy off me. Type in "coffee shops" in the search box, and my link's the first one that comes up(reviews of coffee shops)
p s
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=coffee+sho
C'mon starbucks, I'll let you have it for a nominal fee. Forget a catchy domain name. Think of how many people type in "coffee shops" at yahoo.
This stuff is not supposed to be "Funny"... Tt is supposed to be "Cry"... It is a warning about what may happen in a near future. And here don't blame the geeks, Rob or Taco if this happens. They may be quite far from here when such things may start to happen. There is a dangerous tendency coming up.
Could anyone ever imagine that we would come into this? I was here when Yahoo! came up. I saw it growing from the half-hackers site into the commercial mastodon of today. And many things look dangerously similar to Slashdot's evolution.
Rob if you don't wanna ever dream about this, think always ten times before accepting a million dollar bargain. Well, anyway, it's up to you to decide what you would like most...
to charge us for this Web site? [grin].
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Subscription based revenue models are NOT going to succeed on the backs of individual users. Considering the bloated state of software, requiring SOTA hardware or dual CPU machines to render *reasonable* desktop performance over broadband networks, there is no money left for content.
Yahoo's nice and the question is worth asking what people will pay and for what. I do not believe that Yahoo delivers a value-added component to the content and services it hosts. I have 6 ways to Sunday to obtain info Yahoo posts.
Yahoo is convenient, reliable and trustworthy source but it is not unique, compelling and irreplacable.
Let's see, rent, car, toys, boat, utils, communications, and on top of that Yahoo? rent? I don't think so.
-r
We're not saying they shouldn't make money. We're saying they're not going to that way.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There are several conflicting ancient economic rules that come into play with the internet. Rules that must be revised to work to the economic benefit of all.
:). If I end up posting ads for yahoo.com, all we ever do is trade the same money back and forth. Until the ads make it to a website that brings in a significant amount of its revenue from the wallets of its viewers, there is no money in the internet economy.
:) But if content could be transfered a minimum amount of hops, the cost for that content will drop significantly, as well as increasing the speed by which everyone can access it.
:)
First of all, we have the issue of free service. Everyone who browses the internet expects to do so for free or for a single low flat rate for their isp. They have come to expect this, and I doubt the internet would have taken off if they were charged for every website they wanted to view. I don't want to pay for my information.
To offer this information, it will cost somebody at least something. At the lower end, the isp of the provider can provide a low volume website, but the cost of providing the information will increase with its popularity and size. Information wants to be free, but not for those who provide it.
There has to be a constant, scalable source of revenue to cover the cost of providing the information or service. There are two major possibilities here. Sell the eyeballs of your viewers, or charge the viewers to view the information.
Advertising on the internet might work or it might not. There's a catch 22 in play here. Until the massive bulk of consumers use the internet, ads won't be as lucrative a source of revenue as advertising on the radio or TV are since a lot more people spend a lot more time watching TV then they do on the internet. And even those who DO spend a lot of time on the internet do so engaged in activities that do not subject them to a steady stream of advertising.
The biggest problem with advertising is the fact that while more and more of the people in the world are going online, the original core group of users were of a slightly different breed. The type, for all practical purposes, who don't pay much attention to ads, and spend as much time as possible trying to avoid having to view them at all (Junkbuster and the like come into play here).
On the internet advertising is also subjected to a recursive downward spiral where you end up advertising pages for the sole purpose of selling advertising. When you watch a commercial on TV, they're usually selling a meatspace product. They're not trying to sell you on another service for the sole purpose of throwing advertising on you. The obvious exception to this is when they advertise previews to upcoming shows, but self promotion is always a valid exception. Most TV networks don't make a point of advertising shows on other networks.
On the internet, I might run a website that gains 100% of its revenue from advertising. How will I bring users to my website? I might sell an ad on yahoo since I know there's a big potential audience there. Yahoo of course, gains most, if not all, of their revenue from advertising (at least until now
What this means is, E-commerce is essential for the survival of the internet as it is currently constructed. However, what if I want to provide information to the world at large and not have to pester my viewers with ads, but at the same time, not charge them any money?
This brings up a second point. Information that I serve is mine. I provide it to the world, but *I* want to be the one serving it so I get credit for it. AT least, this is the general perception. However, I can't afford any more than a dsl line without some type of revenue stream. Bandwidth gets cheaper the closer to the backbone you get, but you have to be able to purchase a LOT of bandwidth to get it that cheap.
However, say there was a bandwidth repository between me and the backbone, like at my isp. A huge cache for all of the websites and other files that transfer between the customer websites and viewers on the other end. Whenever a single static file is transfered more than a few times, the cache will pick it up and save it. From that point on, any incoming requests will stop at the isp and be served from the cache instead. If a site is extremely popular, the isp, with its much cheaper, much larger link to the internet will be the one serving all the content and the puny link to the actual website will only be used for initial transfers. Of course, keeping just one level of cache would be inefficient. If a site is REALLY popular, then it could be bumped even closer to the backbone and get served from that point. It could also work in the other direction. If a large number of people on a network access a specific website, then a local cache could store the website data locally to serve to the local users, since its much cheaper to transfer data on a local network than over the internet. This is the biggest issue with napster and college campuses. Its an order of magnitude cheaper to install more bandwidth on campus than it is to utilize the internet feed. If napster only traded files amongst users on the local network and then only went out to the internet if the requested file couldn't be found on any of the 10,000+ local systems.
However, intellectual property laws come into play here. I don't want anyone mirroring my information because I can't sell banner ads to distribute it. Of course, I can't sell banner ads anyway, but thats not really the point. This mentality ends up stalling the whole process.
Yes, I know this wouldn't work for dynamic pages. however, try something. Pick a website, especially an extremely flashy one. Point wget at it and download all the content on the main page. Then do something to form a dynamic change and repeat the process. How much of the data has actually changed? Webpage code itself is relatively small compared to the size of the images, java applets, and banner ads.
This will increase the base cost to the provider of the information or service, as you are now purchasing not only an internet connection, but also cache space. However, as you well know, its much cheaper to purchase something once than to pay for something constantly. In addition, if you can cut down your required bandwidth by 80% because most of your content need not transfer over your expensive pipe and can instead transfer over the pipe of your isp, which only costs them half as much due to their ability to purchase a much larger pipe and get a better data rate for the dollar. Not to mention the fact that the price drops even more the next jump upstream. Its not unreasonable to cut your bandwidth costs down to 10-20% of what would be needed if you served everything from your own system through your own internet feed.
The third issue is that more and more people expect a large quantity of their services to be performed for free or very little. Cell phones are free. There are free computers, free internet access, free long distance. SOMEBODY has to pay for all of this. In the end, its going to be the corporations that end up selling us products and inevitably paying our salaries. Thats how economy works. And if they're going to give away all this stuff for free, they're going to need to have more accurate marketing data so they get a better return on their investment. While I don't feel they should be automatically provided with this information without my permission, I don't feel like its too far out of line to request such information in exchange for an otherwise free product so they can push products my way that I would otherwise be interested in purchasing anyways.
So understand the perspective. We want unlimited privacy, with no intrusion into our lives whatsoever. No cookies, no anonymous tracking, no personal tracking. We don't want any random spam, no targeted advertising (still spam), no banner ads, no targeted banner ads, we want our internet service free or very low cost, with lots of extra services, but nobody calling us to sell us anything. At some point, something is going to have to give. Figure out where you want it to be. Either you're going to have to tell someone that you're a 30 year old male who has an interest in reading about cars, or you're going to have to pay yahoo money so you can do it.
-Restil
(sorry for the extended, pointless rant)
Play with my webcams and lights here
God...I'm tired of the fucking Mastercard parodies. They're not funny anymore!
While yahoo might be well known, a lot of high profile sites use DMoz's data, including Google, AOL, Netscape, and a bunch of others. It is slightly in the backround but a lot of people agree with me that it has higher quality (excepting possibly the Business category). I mean, when LookSmart wanted to get sites to use their data they had to actually pay them to give up DMoz's.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
I wouldn't pay much for Yahoo...
Now Google, I'd pay a lot for that.
>>All search engines can be bought off. This is a part of the business model, unsuccessful as it tends to be. Yeah, long term the supply of sites willing to pay will start running out and it will no longer be worth it to charge for listings. LookSmart paid Altavista a huge amount of money to use its listings and eventually those people will stop paying as well. In the end, I think (or at least hope) that most of these "directories" will stop charging.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
and while I agree that there is a lot to be desired in terms of
quality, I think there are examples of excellence in the Science
hierarchy. Yahoo, by contrast, is usually poor quality in Science.
As for your analysis of what is wrong with dmoz, I couldn't agree
more. It has also been getting worse quite quickly in recent months.
Unfortunately, the rivals to it that I know of are not credible, the
least bad being Dave Winer's ultra-lightweight HTML directories. Do
you know of any better projects?
Oh, I thought you meant, for the whole company.
I hate to be a troll, but does anyone use yahoo anymore when google search is so much better? Yes I understand Yahoo has other services, but there are other sites that do those services better than yahoo. (e.g. Yahoo Auctions vs Ebay, etc )
I think that this idea might fly for Yahoo....i don't see why they would want to do this since they already have money coming out their ears....but because of the huge popularity and all the yahoo diehards...i think they could potentially make some money. You know there are some misinformed business people out their that base decisions soley on name recognition....I disagree with doing this, and i think it is dumb, but I also think they will make a ton of money off of this and I would not be bothered in the least bit to be in their shoes right now.
The anti-salmon
OK, so they want to charge money, but not deliver content? Why would I pay Yahoo to 'aggregate' content, if I could do the aggregation myself and maybe even pay the content CREATORS.
Yahoo just wants to be a paid middle man? We're getting rid of those from the real world. Why do we want to create them on the internet?
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Actually, I think that google gets most of it's money from Yahoo!, so if they go down, Google goes down. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.
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Yahoo are charging for REVIEWS of sites. Raw additions to their index are (it appears) still being done for free.
In addition, they are charging for reviews of ALL commercial sites that fit into certain categories.
What's the problem here? The same fee is being charged to all businesses. Regardless of the businesses size, the review will be completed within seven days.
Sites that don't go into those categories still get in for free (albeit in a unknown timeframe).
They're being sensible and not charging VISITORS to the sites. How is this different from a TV network?
Sort of...
I just got a eLink device (RiM 850 pager) that runs Yahoo. Mail, messenger, WML browser, plus the RiM built-ins like calendar and address book. Flat rate of $35 a month. So far, it seems pretty cool. My only wish is that AOL would wake up and allow AIM to interoperate with other messaging platforms, like Yahoo.
But the point of this story is that there are value-adds that Yahoo can provide that are worth paying for. I'm going to be using this for work instead of a pager. It's much more useful, and cheaper (as far as I've seen).
-Todd
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"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
that said, fees for huge subsections (say IBM or Microsoft) where everything is mapped out in grand detail, that I can see.
but they should be featured is a special section so you know what they are, specific commercial listings.
beyond that, not a big deal.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Given that, I don't know why is everyone so surprised that Yahoo! wants to charge. What I don't understand is, can you really live off sponsors forever? Eventually, I see all these services charging... How else are they supposed to feed those large teams of programmers?
Can you go to the grocery store and get stuff for free? Hell no. I know there's alternatives, as in, you can grow your own veggies (e.g. pot ;-), or visit a non-paying search engine, but eventually, doesn't it boil down to the old adage - "you pay, you play?"
Napster won't wither because of "don't kill the messenger", but sure as f**k we all knew that everyone on there has pirated at least ten songs, if not more. So, how can Napster stand to make any profit just by letting everyone share files? I dont get it.. They have to start charging some measly fee..
I know it isn't nice to take away something that was given for granted (free), but I just cannot comprehend or better yet, visualize, how are these companies supposed to make money unless they start charging? Can you put yourself in their shoes, i.e. it was your company.. Would you settle for no or little money? Would you like to make MORE money and expand? Well, just how are you gonna do that by letting people spread pirated songs and not charging them something for the service and fend off the RIAA with the revenue/profits?
Someone explain to me the basics of capitalism, 'cause I apparently, the C.S. graduate, is clueless ;->.
Thank you.
--
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
It is sad that sites like yahoo and looksmart have to go to charging for listings in order to get money. They should not do this but instead focus on creating quality directories that will give people reason to return. Making people pay for listings compromises their integrity by causing bad sites to be potentially listed while not listing good sites that might not want to fork over the money.
Also, people who find out about this questionable business method might question the accuracy of the search results and stop using sites like this. Yahoo should do something like google, which sells ads but not listings, as they are in a different color and distinct from normal searches (although google is a search engine, not a directory).
I did not submit my business site to yahoo when I saw they were asking money for the submission. I also removed yahoo.com from my toolbar and bookmarks. I do not support pay-to-play, and I hope to god I am not alone. I would be OK with the idea of paying to have pictures put beside my directory listing, or other ways of making my name stand out (like the telephone directories do) but I won't pay just to list.
As far as I'm concerned yahoo is no longer useful to me if they only accept entries for companies that do enough business online to warrant paying for a listing. My company website is really just a reinforcement to my other marketing methods. I very rarely buy things online. I usually am just looking online to find out things like: what is their phone number, what is their email address, what type of image do they project, or (most often) tech support or product information. I can't justify paying to have our website listed when I make zero revenue from it.
Conversely, if I know that the only sites listed on yahoo.com are businesses that pay to get listed, the value of using yahoo drops to zero. Many of the sites I want to see will not be listed.
I'll use google instead thanks.
for those of you who are wondering what my business is that I don't sell online, I'm a custom jeweller
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
I have asked Yahoo, if I could pay them some money in order to get rid of the advertisements in all the e-mails I send and in order to get my correct e-mail address as sender e-mail address instead of the Yahoo! e-mail address.
I am willing to pay $1000 a year for that. I really mean it. Yahoo! does my attachment virus scanning, receives all my faxes via a free U.S. fax number, stores my e-mail so I can access it worldwide, manages spam e-mail and I have never been without e-mail since I started to use Yahoo! e-mail.
I cannot get the same service level anywhere else, but because I use it for business, the advertisements are a real problem.
The obvious alternative for Yahoo! mail is:
- Set up a Microsoft Exchange server
- Get a fixed internet access
- Set up a web-interface for the Exchange server
- Set up a firewall
- Hire somebody to administer the Exchange server
- Hire somebody to keep the firewall up-to-date
- Set up virus scanning software and keep it up-to-date
- Get some fax software, that can put the faxes into Exchange server.
I cannot do that for $1000 a year.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure. Most site placement experts rate a placement at Yahoo higher
than a placement at DMoz, though, so that suggests Yahoo's reputation
is worth more than all the others put together.
Obviously it would be inane for Yahoo to start charging to search the web, send email, or do anything else you can already do for free on yahoo and other sites.
What you are probably looking at is broadband content services similar to things shaping up at web music sites such as MP3.com, and Napster, as well as broadband video.
I personally am convinced that people will pay for content if it is quality, and delivered better than what is otherwise freely available - not sure if this pans out with the rest of the users out there or not. We'll see.
I wouldn't pay much at all for yahoo. Its directory project is far inferior to that of dmoz.org (Humans Do It Better!). A lot of yahoo's categories have 404's and sites that have been discontinued as well as sites without descriptions. You might find a few of those at the ODP but not many comparitively.
It is sad that sites like yahoo and looksmart have to go to charging for listings in order to get money. They should not do this but instead focus on creating quality directories that will give people reason to return. Making people pay for listings compromises their integrity by causing bad sites to be potentially listed while not listing good sites that might not want to fork over the money.
Also, people who find out about this questionable business method might question the accuracy of the search results and stop using sites like this. Yahoo should do something like google, which sells ads but not listings, as they are in a different color and distinct from normal searches (although google is a search engine, not a directory).
On another note, at least yahoo is not quite as stupid as looksmart, in that it only charges for business categories. Businesses might be able to fork over a bunch of money for listings but personal homepages that might have the most devoted people and highest quality (no commercial motivation) wouldn't pay money that often.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
I'm sure many people will complain about Yahoo charging money for adding sites to its directory, but here's a better idea than complaining on Slashdot: go to the Open Directory Project and start participating. Be an editor, or just submit links. The better the ODP gets the less often I (and you) will have to go to Yahoo. Even Google partners with the ODP. Shouldn't you?
Wow. Imagine actually trying to generate revenue by *selling* services. There are some things you pay for, and some things you don't. (www.join4free.com). Caveat Emptor, etiam non pro email vendant :).
"Blow up your TV/Throw away your paper/
Move to the country/Build you a home"
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
even internet billionares need to eat
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Nothing. But if I had a choice between two ISPs, and one came bundled with Yahoo! and the other didn't, that might influence my decision.
Of course I'd be paying for it indirectly, and that would make the ISP look a lot like AOL. As a general rule, I've shunned ISPs that offer premium content, so now that I think of it, the ISP offering Yahoo! wouldn't win me.
At this point the only thing I really use them for is the free finance stuff. If they close that off, I'll just use my broker stuff more. Their finance pages are great; they should license that software to brokers, who would probably pay good money to give their users something with which they are already familiar.
Actually... their charts use GNUplot. If they sold the software to brokers, they'd have to GPL that part, maybe even the whole thing.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
GeoCities Account: $5
Yahoo! Clubs Account: $25
Being able to search for pr0n by category: $100
Knowing that you can get all that stuff for free at other websites: Priceless.
There are some things that money can't buy. For everything else, there's a Yahoo! CEO who wants to bilk my grandma.
Everybody keeps mentioning "I like google better anyway". Well, google doesn't offer free email, chat, etc...
These are the "free" services that everybody has been expecting to become less profitable. People are becoming immune to banner ads and furthermore they have less site-loyalty than they used to, which makes your advertising ability less powerful.
With your rampant "screw that, its not free like my pet OS", you might be giving up ALL the internet luxuries that you enjoy. If yahoo goes under, investors will notice. And not every company is going to make a linux version of their chat client (like yahoo does).
Oh screw it, everything should be free. I'm alive, I MUST deserve it...
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus